


he tells you he loves you

by escapismandsharpobjects



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Broken Bones, FebuWhump2021, Hurt/Comfort, Love Confessions, M/M, Whump, not really graphic violence but there's a brief kinda graphic depiction of an injury i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-12 00:19:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29501205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/escapismandsharpobjects/pseuds/escapismandsharpobjects
Summary: febuwhump day 16: broken bones. eddie's street fighting again and gets seriously hurt. he calls buck, naturally.
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 152





	he tells you he loves you

**Author's Note:**

> hi!! i am back with yet Another street fighting eddie fic lmao.....i hope im not getting repetitive but it is simply my favorite thing ever. this fic is a little different because it's set a bit later in s3 after eddie has stopped street fighting. there is some vaguely graphic depictions of injury but i don't know how bad it is? i don't think it's that bad but be warned there is a little bit.  
> title is inspired by you are jeff by richard siken bc i am gay and i wanted to use it for something lmao.  
> anyway anyway now past all that boring stuff i hope you enjoy this!!!! love u <3

Eddie bounces around the ring, light on the balls of his feet, hands raised, expertly ducking and blocking nearly all of his opponent’s punches. One or two hit him, but he barely feels them, too caught up in focusing on the fight. 

He lashes out with a right hook that his opponent blocks with a swift arm, slamming into it with such an intense force Eddie’s surprised it hadn’t hurt the guy. He strikes out with another punch, which is countered, and receives a solid blow to the nose that knocks him off balance for a second. 

He regains his sense of balance and launches himself again at his opponent with renewed strength brought on by the stinging feeling on his face. He lands a solid punch to the guy’s chest, leaning into it a bit too much, so that the guy in turn has easy access for a punch to his ribs. 

The hit connects, and he stumbles back for a fraction of a second, during which time his opponent leaps at him, a flurry of punches coming his way like all of a sudden the guy is desperate to win within the next five seconds. 

Which he doesn’t. Eddie avoids some of the blows and absorbs the rest, launching himself back with a similar intensity. Two punches to the chest, one punch blocked with a slam down of the arm, a punch to the face…

They separate after a few seconds, both near the edge of exhaustion but evidently equally willing to push themselves past that point if it means winning. Which Eddie is going to do.  _ Has  _ to do. 

The arena has gone fairly silent, apparently in anxious preparation for the final blows of the fight, which everyone can see are coming, Eddie imagines. But even his opponent has gone weirdly still, looking at him like he’s not sure what it is he’s seeing. Eddie reaches up his arm to wipe a bead of sweat away from his eyes, hears a strange  _ ooh  _ sound resonate through the crowd, gives it no thought, and launches himself back for a final knockout punch. 

Which comes, but not from him. A glove hits him in the chin, oddly soft, and ordinarily he doubts this is the kind of punch to take him out, but evidently his head had snapped back harder than he’d thought, because his vision starts to spin and he sinks to the ground. 

Blood rushes in his ears, but normally he can at least hear the crowd cheering faintly over the noise. Now they’re dead silent. He hopes that doesn’t mean the cops are here. 

Eddie looks around, blinking stars out of his vision, and sees several pairs of eyes trained on him. He’s too dizzy to see what kind of emotion they’re conveying, but the low murmur that’s started up tells him it’s probably nothing good. 

Someone grabs him around his left bicep and pulls him to his feet suddenly, leaving his head spinning far worse than it had been before. They drag him out of the ring and push him in the general direction of his truck.

“Wha’s goin on?” he asks. “‘M not leavin yet.”

“Yes, you are,” says an unfamiliar voice. “You’re done for the night, Diaz, and in fact, I don’t wanna see you back here anytime soon. Understand me?”

Eddie nods, though he absolutely does  _ not  _ understand. What had he done wrong? Sure he’d got beat, but that was a one-time thing. He’s good at this. He…

His right arm is wet.  _ Wet? _ He reaches out his left hand to touch the wetness, which feels like it’s too  _ much  _ to be sweat. 

In the dim glow of a singular lamppost, he sees the wetness glistening red on his fingers. He looks at it with a frown on his face, wondering where it had come from, and then looks at his arm. 

Which is... _ oh god.  _

He turns his head away from it immediately, trying and failing not to gag, feeling the pain swell up all at once, screaming and red-hot and physically sickening. 

He looks again, very briefly, in some crazy desire to make sure he’d seen what he’d seen. 

He had. There’s a bone -  _ his  _ bone - sticking through the skin of his forearm, which is covered in his own blood. He screws his eyes shut like not having the option of looking at it will somehow make it better.

Which it doesn’t, of course. Now that he’s seen it, there is no stopping the pain that radiates from his arm, engulfing his entire body so that it’s literally the only thing he’s capable of paying attention to. Hot tears prick at the corners of his eyes, and he lets them fall, hating the way they feel like the blood that’s dripping from his arm. He sinks to the ground, leaning his back against the lamppost, not moving his arm at all, even to a position that might make it a little more comfortable.

_ He needs...he has to… _

He doesn’t know. There’s something...some _ one, _ who will help him. But that’s as far as his brain will allow him to think before it’s pulling him back under the frothing ocean of pain. 

_ Buck.  _

The name comes to him without him needing to focus on it. He can’t  _ think  _ about who Buck is, but simply  _ knows  _ who he is - a big smile, a bigger heart, video games with Chris, teamwork on calls, love, trust. Buck will help him. 

Shaking, bloody fingers find his phone in the duffle bag next to him, which he hadn’t even realized anyone had given him. He briefly blinks open his eyes to unlock his phone and find Buck’s contact - both acts done with no conscious thought behind them - and then Buck’s voice is in his ear and everything hurts so,  _ so much,  _ but he knows with absolute certainty that he is going to be okay.

He can’t find the energy or the focus to speak and feels himself descend further into the pain, but above the roar of it in his ears he hears Buck’s voice saying he’s coming, and to just hold on. 

\--

There’s a hand on his face, cool against the heat that engulfs his whole body. 

“-die? Can you hear me?”

He forces his eyes open and finds himself staring at Buck, whose hand is cupping his cheek and preventing him from turning his face to look at his arm. “Hey,” he manages to whisper, feeling the word grate through his body like sandpaper. 

“Hey,” Buck says softly, and the hand rubs gently against Eddie’s cheek. “I’m gonna take care of you, okay?”

Eddie nods.  _ Buck’s gonna take care of him... _ he focuses on that thought as Buck slowly slips an arm around his left arm and shoulder, pulling him carefully to his feet. 

The change in position makes him even dizzier than he had been before, and he turns his head away from Buck and pukes, trying to focus on the feeling of Buck’s hand on his back until the dizziness fades ever so slightly. 

“You good?” Buck asks, after a moment, and Eddie takes a shaky step in response, not bothering to try and talk. 

They make it the rest of the way to Buck’s jeep without incident, and Buck helps Eddie into the passenger seat, then heads around to the back of the car.

He returns to Eddie’s side in seconds, and tells Eddie to keep his eyes closed. Eddie feels something press into his arm, barely able to be felt over the pain, and then he feels something else touching both sides of his arm, and some part of his mind instinctively knows it’s a splint. 

“Don’t move it,” Buck says, which Eddie’d needed no encouragement not to do. He hears a seatbelt click and realizes it’s his own, and hears his door slam and the driver’s side door open, and then the car starts. 

They’re driving, and Buck’s not saying anything to him, and Eddie desperately wants him to. He’s growing slowly used to the pain, so that thoughts are coming more easily, and they’re all terrible and he just wants to hear Buck’s voice, even if it’s yelling at him. 

“I thought you were done with this,” Buck says eventually. 

“Was,” Eddie breathes. “Just...needed t’...let off some steam.”

“And there wasn’t  _ any  _ better way to do that?”

“Sorry.” He genuinely  _ is  _ sorry. He  _ knows  _ this hadn’t been his best idea, but he’d just felt so overwhelmed the past few days, so out of his own control...and he knows this. Knows fighting. So he’d come. He doesn’t suppose he’ll be doing it again, though. 

Buck doesn’t say anything else, and Eddie wishes again that he would, that he’d lecture him forever, tell him he hates him,  _ anything,  _ just so that he knows Buck’s still there. So he knows he’s not alone.

“It’s okay, Eddie,” Buck says, which is not at all what Eddie’d expected him to say next. His hand comes to rest on Eddie’s thigh, a grounding weight, and Eddie focuses on it, on  _ Buck,  _ for all he’s worth. 

“I get it,” Buck continues. “As much as I can, anyway. I’ve been known to cope poorly with things too.” He laughs, short and low. 

“And I’m mad at you.  _ Really  _ mad. Your - well, you know - you went back to something you  _ promised  _ you were done with and you  _ really  _ got hurt, Eds.”

He knows.  _ God, he knows. _ He feels the hot tears return to his eyes and tries valiantly to hold them back, like he’s losing something by letting them go now, with Buck. 

The car stops, then, and Eddie feels it shift into park. Buck’s hand moves from his leg to his face, brushing away the tears that have begun to fall despite Eddie’s best efforts. There’s a gentleness to the touch that he hates and loves in equal measure. 

“It’s okay,” Buck repeats. “It’s gonna be okay, Eddie.”

He wants to believe that. He  _ does.  _ And when it’s  _ Buck  _ saying it...

Very slowly, Eddie opens his eyes, needing suddenly to look at Buck. His eyes are shiny in the dark, familiar and comforting amidst the pain. 

_ I love you, _ Eddie thinks, and the pain must make him bold for a split second, because he lifts his left hand to place it atop Buck’s, still on his cheek, and says it out loud. 

Buck says nothing, but gently moves Eddie’s hand and his own, and gets out of the car. For a single second Eddie panics, but then Buck’s opening his door into the parking lot of the hospital and giving him a hand out, not even waiting for Eddie to stumble before grabbing hold of him. But instead of supporting him around the shoulders, Buck very carefully hugs him and presses a soft, quick kiss to Eddie’s temple. 

“I love you, too,” he whispers against Eddie’s skin, and without another word he’s leading Eddie along to the Emergency entrance, the letters glowing in the dark like blood, or maybe like the pink Eddie sees on Buck’s cheeks. He’s a little too dizzy to think too hard about which it is, but the dizziness seems like the least important thing in the world. He keeps his eyes open, focusing them on Buck and Buck alone.

“I love you,” he says again, like he needs to be sure Buck had really heard him, like Buck knows what he’s getting himself into. 

“You said that already,” Buck reminds him, stopping for a brief second to return Eddie’s gaze, strong and sure even through the dark, “but you can say it again as much as you want. I love you, too.”

They step together through the sliding doors, Buck’s arm around Eddie’s shoulder, and despite the pain still raging in his arm, Eddie finds himself smiling. He loves Buck. 

And Buck loves him, too.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading!!! hope you liked it and please tell me if you do :)


End file.
